WASHINGTON  As President Barack Obama considered adding as many as 40,000 U.S. forces to a backsliding war in Afghanistan in 2009, Vice President Joe Biden warned him that the military rationale for doing so was flawed, a new book about Obama's expansion of the conflict says.

The book, "Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan," also says that in planning the drawdown of troops two years later, the White House intentionally sidelined the CIA. Obama purposely did not read a grim CIA assessment of Afghanistan that found little measurable benefit from the 30,000 "surge" forces Obama eventually approved, the book quotes a U.S. official as saying.

This was all told by Bob Woodward in his book “Obama’s Wars”. Bob had full access to all kinds of people and records. Meqnwhile we losts generals for telling the truth (e.g. Stanley McCrystal in the Rolling Stone article). Media and the people do not read, or, if they do, they do there is no sharing of what they learn IF IT DOES NOT FIT OBAMA-IS-GREAT TEMPLATE.

The book was proceeded the previous fall by the PBS Frontline show Obama's War. The Frontline show was what precipitated all these discussions/policy reviews in the Whitehouse in the fall of 2009. Also, the show was one of the factors used in the decision to give Woodward access.

Afghanistan should be broken down along tribal lines and natural geographic features. This approach would result in stable political units. If one little country gets out of line we can set the others on it like wolves. It worked for the Romans and the Afghanis are still barbarians.

Drudge had a link earlier to a column about this book which focussed on Richard Holbrooke and how he was constantly disrespected by Obama. Of course Holbrooke had ties to the Clintons which was part of it, but it sounds like Obama the supposed genius couldn't stand to be around someone who was obviously much smarter and more accomplished than himself. I have mixed feelings about Holbrooke (who died in Dec. 2010) but it appears that a lot of the trouble was Obama's pettiness and amateurishness.

When I looked at Drudge again just now the link seemed to have disappeared.

Right. Well the point being: We have been told (have known) for awhile that Obama had a stupid plan, tured it over to Biden, and tried to weasel his way out of Afghanisrtan and Iraq and Gitmo. But media and the general public do not read the warning signs, popular books, etc which should set the news leads. Deliberate cover up.

What irks me most is how Obama cashiers highly trained 3 and 4 star generals, which take years and years to train and season, after he orders them to give access to scum like Rolling Stone and when they are spun or misquoted in such a way to cast aspersions on The One, they are just gone. We can’t replace command staff that fast. It is outrageous. But no one cares because the medai treats it like no big deal.

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